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The Double Portrait of the Dukes of Urbino


The portrait set, The Dukes of Urbino, also referred to as the Double Portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, is a diptych, done in tempera on wood panel. It measures 47 x 33 cm in length on each panel. The set of portraits were painted by the artist Piero della Francesca between the years 1473-1475 A.D. Currently, the set of paintings reside in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. The works are some of the most significant and important paintings created during the early Italian renaissance.

The Artist
Piero Della Francesca, also known as Piero Di Benedetto Dei Franceschi, was born around 1417 and died on October 12, 1492. He was born in the small town of Borgo Santo Sepolcro in Tuscany. His style was recognized in the 20th century a a major contribution to the Italian Renaissance. His father worked as a tanner and shoemaker, and was well-off enough to be able to afford a classical education for his son. It is unknown how Piero first became trained as a painter, but his favored field of study was perspective. Some say that he learned his trade about art from one of several Sienere artists in San Sepolcro during his youth. Piero was his parents' third child. He attended school in his home town, where he applied himself in mathematics and geometrics. In Piero's early years, he began dabbling in art. During this time, he was recorded to have worked on the painting "Poles and Candles." During the late 1430's, Piero moved to Florence, Tuscany; a large city that was an artist hub at the time. . He began working on mirror paintings for places like hospitals. While traveling to continue his artistry, Piero came across many different painters, noblemen and philosophers. The culture that Piero was interacting with allowed him to mature in his works. He observe the neat bold lines of Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Masaccio, and Brunelleschi. . He also learned new scientific and mathematical treaties from Leon Battista Alberti. Also while in Florence, Piero became interested in humanism. Humanism was a new focus of classical writers, historians, and poets. After some time, Piero finally returned to his hometown where he was elected town council in 1442. Achieveing his master status, Piero traveled, painting panels in churches. He sometimes completed paintings in his hometown, staying loyal to it, but also found it easy to travel because he never married. Some of his most famous works include “Flagellation of Christ,” “Polyptych of the Misericordia,” and “The Legend of the True Cross.” In the final years of his life, Piero was fascinated by geometry and mathematics, and wrote a treatise on painting. It is widely believed that he was blind during his last years of life.

Painting Medium
This double portrait set was rendered by the artist Piero della Francesca in the medium most popular during the time period, early renaissance Italy, called tempera, and then applied carefully onto wood panel. Tempera was the traditional medium of nearly all artists who worked within the field of creating medieval paintings, particularly those painted within what is our modern concept of Italy. Italy during the renaissance period was made up of different warring city states, each with their own governments and laws. Italy as we know it today, a single unified county, would not come into existence until the modern period. Tempera is a paint that dries very quickly, giving it an appeal to artists who needed to complete their work briskly. It consists of a variation of different colored pigments, mixed carefully with a liquid binder. The liquid binder was made of a combination of water and egg yolk, which is the reason tempera is also sometimes referred to as egg tempera. The qualities of tempera allow it to be a very long lasting medium, and many paintings done in tempera still exist, a great number in good condition, some dating back to the first century A.D. The methods of actually creating the tempera paint were specific to each painter, and because of this painters kept their exact paint recipes a secret. The paint however, had a basic formula which most painters followed. The artist had to take great care in finding high quality pigments, which once grounded into a very fine dust would make a brilliant, luminous color quality. Some pigments were common to the artist’s region, while other, more expensive pigments such as lapis lazuli would be imported to Italy from as far away as Persia or even China. Some of the pigments used by these artists were very toxic, such as cinnabar, orpiment, and lead. Inhalation of these pigments likely put a great many artists into early deaths. Artists were recorded as sometimes suffering from what was called “Painter’s Cough” and what modern doctors now recognize as lead poisoning.

Subject Matter and Patrons
The subject of an early italian renaissance painting is normally the main focus of the work itself. While landscapes and portraiture were created during this period in Italy, artwork made with the intent of focusing upon the themes of the church was far more common, especially considering the power of the Catholic Church and the Pope being at the heart of Italy. One of the interesting elements about this work, The Dukes of Urbino, is just how secular the themes within it are. It is a basic double portrait set, a pair of paintings created with the sole intention of showing off the patron’s wealth and power. The patrons of this piece were, of course, the Dukes of Urbino, the husband and wife pair who are themselves depicted in the portraits. The woman depicted was Battista Sforza, the duchess of Urbino. She was born sometime in 1446, and died in July of 1471, after giving birth to her seventh child, at the age of 25. It is speculated that the pale color of her skin refers to her early death, which occurred soon after these paintings were completed. The man depicted within these works is the duke of urbino, Federico da Montefeltro, who ruled the duchy of Urbino from 1444 to his death in 1482. He was a renowned humanist and one of the most successful condottieri in Italy during his life. He was also known for his patronage of the arts. One thing that would likely strike the average viewer of this work as peculiar is the harshly shaped profile of his nose. This profile was likely his real one, as the Duke had lost his right eye and part of the bridge of his nose in a tournament accident when he was younger. The accident scarred his face prominently, therefore requiring him to always be painted on his ‘good side’.

Fine Details of Composition
“The Dukes of Urbino” was painted between 1465 and 1472. It is a diptych, though today it is shown as a pair of paintings in a single frame, and the hinges which locked the Duke and Duchess’ gazes have been abandoned. This work, despite being created as a simple portrait of the duke and his wife, is filled with implicit meanings, both symbolic and obvious. In the work the Duke and Duchess are portrayed as monumental figures, that is to say they are literally larger than all of their surroundings. The figures of the duke and duchess tower over their landscape, as if they are showing off the power and ownership they posses over the lands around them. That of course, was their intention. The duke and duchess are also both painted in a sharp profile. This was done to harken back to the manner in which roman emperors were portrayed on their coinage. To people living in the same region nearly one thousand years after the fall of the roman empire, the Romans were one of the most powerful, legendary forces the Italians knew of. By portraying themselves in a manner that was reminiscent of Rome and its power, the Duke and Duchess were not only reminding the viewer of their inherited legacy of Rome, but also making the commanding statement that they were the ‘new Rome’, and the inheritors of the power that Rome held. The pale skin of the Duchess is another striking detail within the work. The white pallor of her skin has been the subject of much debate among art historians. It is possibly simply a representation of what was stylish apparel for great ladies in renaissance Italy. This is a strong possibility, seeing as the duchess is portrayed as possessing other stylish features of the time, such as the heavy brocade like fabric on her sleeves, known as cloth-of-gold and highly costly, or her high forehead which women at the time were known to pluck to give themselves an ethereal appearance. However, it is also possible that the coloring of her skin was not due to any style choices, but to death. The duchess, depending on the exact date of completion of the work, may have died before the painting was completed. She died very young, at the age of 25, just after giving birth to her seventh child.

Place in Art History
This work has a powerful significance in Art History, for several reasons. One such characteristic is the newfound renaissance ideals that are highlighted within the piece. Both the Duke and his wife are painted in a highly naturalistic style, that is to say, they are painted as they actually appeared in the real world. This might seem unimportant in the modern world, but during the 1460s Italy, and to a lesser extent Europe, was undergoing a massive cultural revolution that occurred over a period of one hundred years. Today this period is referred to as the Renaissance, a word literally meaning revolution. The renaissance encompassed several ideas, such as the naturalistic portrayal of things as they really were, rather than in the stylized forms of the medieval era, and the focus on humanism, which was simply the practice of putting more emphasis on the here and now, rather than on what was to come. This work emphasises every aspect of its times. The figures are soft and realistic, painted in the new style. The evidence of the influence of humanism is very clear, in the very subject matter itself. It is a self portrait of two very wealthy individuals, and the painting in of itself was clearly created for its patrons for one reason, to show off the enormous wealth that the patrons possessed. The painting does not exist to praise god or the church, it exists to praise the wealth and power of the two people who paid the artist to create it. The downright arrogance and individuality of something like a self portrait was in fact deemed too arrogant for much of the medieval era, a period lasting nearly a thousand years. What may seem like a tame act today, is actually a reflection of the wildly changing social ideals of renaissance Italy.